I am a professional writer, editor, and consultant, with more than 20 books published under another name. I divide my time among Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the U.S. I enjoy stories that are realistic enough that they might have happened and fanciful enough that they might not have. I value communication, adventure, exploration, passion, and love.

I appreciate your visiting my site. I welcome comments and questions. Note that comments are held for review before being posted, so you may not see your comment appear right away. You don't need to enter your name, web site, or an email address to post a comment (though you may if you wish). You can comment on any topic at any time--it doesn't matter if the post is from several months ago. Your comment will make it current again!

It is easy to respond to many of the comments that people leave here, because the comments are interesting. Whenever one comes in, I get a message to my email telling me that a comment is there for my approval, so I pop over to this site, approve it, and often answer at the same time. However, comments on this blog go to two different places, depending on their nature — they might go to a certain post, or they might go to the spam folder.

Actually, a good number don’t even make it as far as the spam folder. One of the plug-ins I use on this site is “Bad Behavior,” which stops around a thousand or so attempted spam comments every week. For a blog on erotica, the name “Bad Behavior” is simply delicious; and it lets me see notices such as this:

If you find Bad Behavior valuable, please consider making a financial contribution to further development of Bad Behavior.

And I do, and I did! I do find bad behavior valuable, and I did make them a small contribution.

Those comments, though, that get through Bad Behavior’s defenses, are relegated by Akismet to the spam folder:

Akismet has protected your site from 1123 spam comments already, but there’s nothing in your spam queue at the moment.

Generally, I don’t do much more with the spam folder than empty it a few times a week. But this time, I took a more careful look at the comments, and found some amusing surprises. In the future, I’m sure I’ll just be deleting without reading again. But just now, I will take the opportunity to copy some in here and answer them.

Some, of course, cannot really be answered. The most common type of spam I get is simply a long list of links, usually to medications of some sort.

Others are more cryptic:

puv, xdsyb hb ioslgvtf d voodu.

znou zunhlokm a qy r!

sku [best tube clips]

, jszz aq cn v jmni y.

qhbbny meyehf orgw g hysq. crv, [adult dvd empire]

, cxuk j wjzrtszo h grnpti kr zbxc adz.

gwx vw pli.

It reminds me a bit of being in a country where I don’t speak the local language — most of what I hear is gibberish, but every once in a while I catch a word or phrase as it whizzes by (like “adult DVD empire”). Without understanding the whole sentence, all I can do is guess at the meaning (I’m supposed to go to an empire and purchase adult DVDs?). I get by in these situations pretty well by just nodding and looking thoughtful.

Some spam is comprised entirely of familiar words, and yet… something seems to be missing. Like verbs. And syntax.

OK, this one has familiar words, and verbs, and syntax (or at least a stab at it), and yet… and yet…

Right away when I blend with to go to my weekly canoeing or dragon boating, my teammates are all good-looking amused by my fivefingers sport shoes, and rubberneck at them looking for some time. I divine the toe-shaped relaxation shoes makes it look like a web of some throw, but it’s not like I can swim in these fivefingers shoes. I’m finding the outdoor sports shoes very untroubled, and although I cannot depreciate with it as I would with predictable constant distraction shoes, at least I can stride along the pontoon or bank zone in plenty, contrastive with when I used to shuffle barefooted. My feet old to cripple or get scorched from the latest ground, but not with these fivefingers mockery tease shoes I don’t. Win a look at the pictures to be wise to persevere how the fivefingers open-air sports hold up to ridicule shoes look like from the top and bottom.

*Nods and looks totally confused* Do you write for Japanese t-shirt companies too, by any chance?

My favorites, though, are the ones that accidentally wind up somewhere almost relevant. Like this one, appended to my review of Rachel Kramer Bussell’s Fast Girls:

Did you people notice that the main character is a girl in this game? Interested to see how that plays how.

Yes, you know, I totally DID notice that the main character was a girl in each story! That was very perceptive of you! Probably the last line was meant to be, Interested to see how that plays… and how!

Another “reader” commented on the same review:

Hello, you site is very funny he told me to cheer up .. Merry Christmas.

I don’t know if I’d call the whole collection “funny,” exactly, but yes, it could cheer someone up, considerably.

It’s good, actually, to see the book reviews getting so much attention. This one for Fulani’s Secret Circus of Pain and Degradation drew these insightful remarks:

Just wanted to say that is in my best blog list on #3 place, This is again an super adorable post Best Regardss

* * *

The Kolumbian philosophy of Divorce ! 🙂

* * *

Hi everyone Thanks for such polite info. The information which you provided on this blog is truly useful and informative for each person. This would be a help for every age of people who needs info on “Social Networking”; it took me a long time to read all the comments.

There is obviously a whole lot to know about this. I believe you made some excellent factors in Functions also. Keep operating , great position!

* * *

Hello there, I found your blog by way of Google although looking for first help to get a coronary heart assault and your post looks incredibly interesting for me.

* * *

this post is very usefull thx!

No prblm! Gld to hlp!

I’ll close with a representative sampling of spam comments from various posts.

I adore this blog theme. How hard is it to customize? Would you be able to shoot me an email? I would love to get this theme and use it on some of my blogs. Thank you in advance, Marcella.

It’s called “Sakura,” Marcella (or “Marcella”), and it’s pretty easy to customize if you have even basic html knowledge. You’ll need to be using a self-hosted WordPress site, though. Sorry I don’t have time to send you a personal email, but I’m sure you understand.

Love your site man keep up the good work.

Thanks, dude.

this reform legislation is not likely being perfect, but it truly is nowhere from being your monstrosity that requires dismantling. whenever anything, it needs to be beefed up on paying for healthcare for most of us. Without it, a catastrophe of monumental proportions awaits us all.

Wrong blog, but I have to say, I do support access to healthcare for all. It seems unlikely that I’ll ever write an erotic story on precisely that theme, though.

Superb blog post, I have book marked this internet site so ideally I’ll see much more on this subject in the foreseeable future!

Thank you! I do have more stories in the pipeline, so keep checking back.

Have you ever considered placing more videos to your blog posts to keep the followers more interested? I mean I just read through the entire post of yours and it was quite excellent but since I’m more of a visual learner,I found that to be more handy well let me know how it turns out!

Ah…. that’s a whole ‘nother genre, there, and not one I’m going to get into. But visual learners can still read books, you know!

hi there, I haven’t spoken to you on the msn in a while, but I believed I would email you from my fresh Notebook!! No joke, I work for a top company at this point in the revision dept. Don’t tell everyone but we uncovered this site that is totally glitching and mailing out absolutely free Netbook!! to anybody that signs up. I think you may possibly have to confirm your email, xox alte omafotzen

You haven’t spoken to me on “the msn” ever. No one has.

Do you have a MyDirtyHobby ?

Yes, but I’m not going to tell you what it is. 😉

Howdy blogger how was the whether in Montana this tyme of the year ???

Howdy! I have know idea watt its lyke their now.

As a Newcomer, I am always looking on the internet for posts which can easily help me. Although do you know how come i just can’t see all the pix on your web site? Regards, Renea.

I don’t know. Maybe because you’re not a visual learner?

I love your weblog.

Aw…. thank you! So do I.

* * * * *

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Are you having trouble maintaining an erection, though, Shar? Because I have 2,449 contacts in my email who can probably help you. And they’re obviously not doing it for the money since in the last week alone, some of them earned over $350 just for sitting and typing!

The one that started “Right away when I blend with to go…” kind of caught my interest. Very Faulkner-esque writing style. I also like “obviously there is a whole lot to know about this.” From now on, every time I feel in over my head in a conversation, I’m using that.

Amusing post! Most of the stuff you’ve listed consists of attempts by spammers to get past spam filters – including text in the body of an email, including actual words, including sentences, and I’ve noticed spam recently that is supposed to replicate blog messages but are usually off-key because they’re ‘one size fits all’.

I don’t seem to get as many begging letters as I once did, though – the kind of thing that explains how someone’s appalling circumstances can be changed if only you sent them all your bank details so they can wire money to you from an account in some developing country.

I’ve sometimes considered taking the random collections of words and seeing if it’s possible to weave a surreal story of of them… one day, possibly, when I’m terminally bored.

The only thing I would say is that when I’ve Japanese people try to write proper comments on my blog, it’s sometimes difficult to discern whether the comments are spam or not because the syntax is often a bit off and the words they sometimes use aren’t quite the ones native speakers would use…

Oh thank you. I haven’t seen a really good “comprised entirely of familiar words” email in quite some time. My anti-spam filter must be doing its job. At one of my workplaces, we used to collect the “best” ones and post them on our department bulletin board.

And as for Bad Behavior, well, I’m merely a Bad Influence. But I’d be happy to help encourage more bad behavior wherever necessary.

Hilarious post; I actually giggled out loud a couple of times while reading it!

I’ve had a few laughs from some of the comments that spammers try and post on my website. One called ‘Good Porn Movies’ attracts a lot of them (no surprise why!) and some are just too funny not to allow through (once I strip them of their links, of course!)

Bearing in my mind that my website is about force fantasy erotica and the post is about porn movies, one spammer wrote, “[…]Reading this post reminds me of my previous boss! He usually kept babbling about this[…]” and another, “[…]My husband and me have squandered some time browsing over your web page and surprisingly sufficient you touched on some thing we were discussing only the other week with our accountant[…]”

They’re definitely more fun when they’re funny! There seem to be spam trend waves, too. For a while I was getting the same paragraph but with different nouns and verbs swapped out via some automatic thesaurus each time. These days I get ones that are “disguised” (though not very well) as genuine comments. However, they make no mention of the post topic, so they do stick out rather.

An example: “Stumbled into this site by chance but I’m sure glad I clicked on that link. You definitely answered all the questions I’ve been dying to answer for some time now. Will definitely come back for more of this. Thank you so much.” This posted to “An online writing class with Shanna Germain.” Dying to have those questions answered? Goodness, just email Shanna, then.